by Don C. Brunell
President, Association of
Washington Business

The number of regulations is increasing at all levels of government.
For example, the New York City Health Department announced recently that it wants to ban restaurants from using partially hydrogenated oil, or trans fats. Trans fats are commonly found in margarine, shortening and frying oils and are used to make everything from pastry to french fries to doughnuts.
While scientists agree that trans fats are unhealthy, some people question whether the government is going too far by regulating what kind of shortening a restaurant uses.
Publicity about trans fats has already prompted many companies to remove them from their products. Wendys switched to a new cooking oil, Crisco now sells a shortening with no trans fats, Frito-Lay removed them from Doritos and Cheetos, and Kraft took trans fats out of Oreo cookies.
Health Department officials say the voluntary route doesnt work. They imposed a voluntary ban last year but found trans fat usage unchanged in a recent survey.
So, regulating trans fats is a good thing, right? Maybe.
There has been much publicity and public debate about the dangers of trans fats, and last year the U.S. Food and Drug Administration began requiring food labels to list trans fats. But rather than encourage people to ask questions, read labels and take responsibility for making good choices, many believe local, state and federal government should simply impose new regulations.
But the cost to our nation of the millions of regulations already on the books is staggering.
According to the Heartland Institute in Chicago, the cost of dealing with federal regulations in 2005 not counting state and local regulations was $1.127 trillion. To put that number in perspective, the federal budget deficit for 2005 was $318 billion, one of the largest in our nations history. Still, the cost of federal regulations that same year was 350 percent higher.
Put another way, U.S. federal regulatory costs exceed the entire economic output of countries such as Canada and Mexico.
The trend to regulate is not diminishing. Heartland research shows there are over 4,000 new regulations at various stages of implementation throughout the 50-plus federal departments, agencies and commissions. In 2005, it cost taxpayers $38.3 billion to merely administer federal regulations on the books. Remember, those costs do not include the billions spent to police state and local rules and government mandates.
In addition, these regulations often spawn lawsuits that create a further drag on the economy. By last estimate, court action added $280 billion in hidden costs in 2004 alone, costing the average American $885 per year. Just think of what a family of four could do with an extra $3,500.
Regulatory costs take their toll on our economy. Just imagine the equipment, economic expansion, employee benefits, and jobs that could be created with $1.127 trillion dollars.
Lets do the math. The $1.127 trillion spent each year dealing with just federal regulations is equivalent to 22.5 million jobs that pay $50,000 a year.
Of course, we do need some regulations, and we are not out to deprive an aggrieved person of recovering damages when harmed, but before we automatically embrace the latest proposal of the New York City Health Department, we should ask ourselves three questions:
1. What is the cost versus the benefit?
2. Will it unnecessarily lead to more lawsuits?
3. Are there outdated, unnecessary, and overlapping regulations that should be repealed or modified?
It is hard to imagine that our founding fathers envisioned a day when there would be restaurant cops in New York City testing cooking oil at over 24,600 food service establishments.